Why Pessimism Sounds Smart

pessimists seem smart, and optimists seem naive. But the facts support the optimists, and culture needs to shift to support them as well, not to avoid a terrible future (although a more cynical future sounds terrible), but to create a much better one.

The third source of optimism is a kind of more recent understanding that progress—the progress that we have had—is not really visible. It’s a very small delta. So, we may only create 1% more progress every year than we destroyed. Net progress of 1% is really not visible in any given year. But 1% compounded over decades and even centuries is what ci... See more

On the surface, an optimistic belief might seem no more valid than the stance of pessimism. But the deep history of new ideas makes it very clear that the optimistic stance of believing something is possible is a requirement to make anything new real, and is thus more powerful than pessimism. In the long run, optimists shape the future.